


mess up my bed with me

by thesilverwitch



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Footy Secret Santa, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 13:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2851955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverwitch/pseuds/thesilverwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mats struggles on his way to the bathroom. His right shoulder is tilted toward the floor and with it the rest of his body. His head has hit the wall a good four times now and possibly broken a picture frame. When he gets to the toilet, he spends five minutes trying to remember what he was going to do—wash his shirt after Kuba spilled beer on it like an asshole—and another five trying to remember how doors work—this one you have to slide, tricky bugger.</p><p>This is all due to the fact that Mats is very, very drunk. More precisely, he is one absinthe shot away from reaching the ‘pissed out of his mind’ phase and two from throwing up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mess up my bed with me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [revving_riffs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/revving_riffs/gifts).



> This was written for the [Footy Secret Santa](footy_ssanta.livejournal.com). Merry Christmas, Carole! I really hope you like this fic. I know you wanted something canon, so I did the best I could <3

It happens on a Friday night.

They’re at a party where the drinks are flowing, the music is incomprehensible dubstep and at least two people have already passed out by the pool. It's your average been there, done that footballer’s party.

Mats struggles on his way to the bathroom. His right shoulder is tilted toward the floor and with it the rest of his body. His head has hit the wall a good four times now and possibly broken a picture frame. When he gets to the toilet, he spends five minutes trying to remember what he was going to do—wash his shirt after Kuba spilled beer on it like an asshole—and another five trying to remember how doors work—this one you have to slide, tricky bugger.

This is all due to the fact that Mats is very, very drunk. More precisely, he is one absinthe shot away from reaching the ‘pissed out of his mind’ phase and two from throwing up.

After leaving the bathroom, Mats can’t remember where he came from—he can’t even remember whose house this is—so he takes off in a random direction. He doesn’t find the living room or any of his teammates, but he does find an open door leading to a guest room. The sight of a large bed with a mountain of pillows on top of it makes him realize lying down is the most amazing thing on earth. Mats doesn’t hesitate to walk the few extra steps it takes to collapse on the pristine sheets.

He wasn’t wrong. Lying down is _amazing_.

It makes his head begin to swim, back and forth and sideways and upwards, but it’s still so good. He’s stuck in a stormy sea, relentless and bitter, but while his skull complains his body has already been lulled into relaxing by the beat of the waves.

With some effort, Mats turns himself around and pushes his body nearer the center of the bed. The new change in place ensures his body lays on the bed in its entirety, making it a definite improvement. His head is still swimming, but now he can look up and see—himself. See himself. How can he do that?

Mats stares for a couple of seconds. He frowns. The version of himself on the ceiling frowns back.

Who the hell has a ceiling mirror on a guest bedroom?

Mats pushes his shirt back so it’s not riding up his torso and thinks turning around again. After some consideration, he decrees further movement too arduous and gives up.

After he leaves this party, he won’t touch another drop of alcohol for a month.

He’s not going to promise he’s never drinking again, because even in his drunken state he knows that’s ridiculous, but he needs to take a break from murdering his liver. He also needs to figure out how to get up and go home, but he’s taking this nice and slow, one step at a time.

Mats doesn’t even realize he’s closed his eyes and fallen asleep until a heavy weight drops on top of him, pushing all the air out of his lungs.

“Oh god,” Mats groans, thinking he might need to revise his earlier statement on being two shots away from throwing up.

“What are you doing?” the weight on top of him asks.

"I'm being squashed to death,” Mats croaks as he tries to push the weight with a blonde mohawk and a t-shirt that says ‘Life is the sweetest drug’ off him.

“You’re weak, Mats Hummels, and you won’t survive the winter,” Marco says as he refuses to move. 

“I won’t survive _you_ ,” Mats says, not even thinking about the words coming out of his mouth. If he dies from this, he will so come back as an angry, good-looking ghost just to haunt the shit out of Marco’s ass.

Marco’s shoulders are made of eel skin, too slick for Mats to grip, or at least that’s what Mats thinks. The truth is, Mats is currently struggling with moving his hands in the right direction, never mind grabbing ahold something. The lower part of his torso is being compressed against the bed by one of Marco’s arms while Marco’s head is tucked beneath Mats’ neck, both of which making it even harder for Mats to move.

How big will the blow to his dignity be if he begs for sweet release from death by an asshole who pretends he hasn’t eaten all the cake when no one is looking? After some thinking, Mats decides he can always deny the whole thing later if Marco tells anyone about it.

The magical word is on the tip of his tongue when he’s interrupted by Marco himself, who sounds calmer than anyone with that amount of alcohol in his arteries should.

“Everyone thinks I'm in love with Mario.”

He doesn’t say anything else, but Mats still waits him out. He knows Marco, can always tell when his friend is done talking and when there’s more weighing on his conscience.

“Everyone thinks I'm in love with Mario and now that Mario is frolicking in Munich, they keep giving me pitying looks. It’s like they think I'm the housewife left behind while my husband is away on a fake work trip to fuck his younger, prettier mistress.”

“But you’re not any of that,” Mats says even though the words seem inadequate. He knows he’s missing a piece of the puzzle. Marco is always the first person to say ‘fuck what everyone else thinks’. This isn’t like him.

"I know I'm not, but everyone thinks it and you think it and it’s so frustrating because I love Mario, but not like that, so why can’t you just _see_ it,” Marco gets riled up as he talks, his words slurring together with the taste of anger and alcohol. One of his hands fists around Mats’ shirt until the fabric is stretched tight across Mats’ skin, the other hand coiled on the bedsheets.

"Hey, hey, come on. Relax. I know you’re not in love with Mario, Marco. I know that,” Mats says. He lays a hand over the one Marco has on the shirt and kneads the pale skin until Marco lets go.

“Then why?” Marco asks, pushing the words against Mats’ neck. He sounds small. Frightened. Mats wraps his arms around Marco’s body. The weight doesn’t bother him anymore.

“Why what?” 

“Why don’t you do something?” Marco asks. Mats keeps a groan from falling out of his mouth through sheer will and determination alone.

He has no clue what Marco is talking about and he has a feeling Marco doesn’t either. They should have known better than to participate in the shot drinking contest earlier in the night. Jello shots are only ever good in theory.

“What do you want me to do, Marco?” he asks, rolling each word on his tongue to make sure he’s pronouncing them clearly. Mats cannot be held responsible for his actions in the eventuality of Marco replying ‘do the thing’.

“I want you to like me,” Marco mumbles. Before Mats gets the chance to say the obvious, Marco sits up using Mats’ torso to hold himself up, which makes Mats’ hands slip down to Marco’s waist. “And I mean like, _like_ me and not a ‘no homo, bro’ like.”

_Oh_ , Mats thinks.

Marco’s eyes flutter to Mats’ face before he looks down at his hands. His nails scratch against the fabric of Mats’ shirt. The party downstairs has become white noise, a buzz in the background Mats can no longer identify. There is a window in front of the bed. Mats knows if he were to look through the glass, he would see a dark sky with no stars in sight.

The silence stretches.

“Oh,” Mats says. He used to pride himself on his eloquence.

Marco’s face falls from the careful neutral expression it had on to a frown, with down-curved lips, furrowed brows, and half-lid eyes. The pressure on Mats’ chest grows as Marco tries to push off him for good and leave, but Mats won’t have any of it. He uses all of his strength, which is not a lot in his current state, to lock Marco in place and force him to stay.

“What are you—” Marco tries to say, cut off by Mats.

“Don’t,” he asks.

He’s not sure what he’s asking, if he wants Marco to stay because he needs time to think or if he wants him to stay because that’s what they should always do: stay by each other’s side.

Marco shakes his head, but he doesn’t try to leave again. 

Mats stares up at him. This moment at a party where they’re both drunk and red-faced in a stranger’s bedroom, with Marco’s cheekbones cut by the parking lot lights and his weight resting on top of Mats. This moment isn’t the right one for a revelation about how your best friend might be in love with you, but Mats’ figures there can’t be a lot of moments right for that in the first place.

Mats says, “You’re drunk,” because he thinks, for a trembling second, that saying it will make things easier for them.

It doesn’t.

“So are you,” Marco replies and it’s the truth in both cases.

Mats nods.

He’s sure their conversation doesn’t make any sense, but his thoughts are too sparse in his mind to hold on to them. Instead, Mats holds on to what he does know with definite certainty. One of these facts is that while he is not an overly private person, there are things that even he has never told a soul.

Another one is that he’s been in love with Marco Reus for five years, two months and six days. 

Like many others, he thought Marco was in love with Mario when he first met him. By the time he realized all the texting, the late-night calls, the bed sharing and having each other as their phone background was honest to god, one-hundred percent platonic, Marco was his best friend and Mats didn’t have the guts to make a move.

So that was that.

On this same day, Mats decided to, in the words of a fictional Disney character, let it go. Marco had never shown any interest in him and Mats was fine with the way things were.

To this day, the way he loves Marco isn’t overwhelming or staggering. It is simple. It is a weight on his heart, the air in his lungs. It is a wish, a need, a desire that he has never dared to voice out loud, until eventually he stopped noticing it was there, although he knew it’d never left.

Loving Marco is easy. It’s a thought on the back of his head that he knows and knows well, but also one he hasn’t brought to the front of his mind in a long time.

Margo’s legs tighten around Mats’ torso. One of Mats’ hands slips beneath Marco’s shirt. 

Maybe it’s finally time to bring it forward.

“How long—” Mats starts to ask before he cuts himself off. He’s not ready for this conversation. 

Marco mustn’t be either because he asks, “Does it matter?” 

Mats shakes his head. “No, it doesn’t.”

Another beat. Marco moves to leave again. Mats’ hold grows tighter.

“I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one night, thank you very much. I would like to leave now if you’d be so kind, Mr. Hummels,” he says in the pissy voice he always uses on annoying reporters and on Mats when Mats is being a dick, which is not fair on Mats because he isn’t trying to be a dick right now. He isn’t.

“I like you too,” Mats manages to stutter out, making Marco freeze and stare at him with distrust written on the lines of his face.

“Are _you_ just saying that because you’re drunk?” Marco asks.

Mats shakes his head again, this time with the kind of enthusiasm that makes his drunk body complain in the form of a nausea wave. Mats squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. He has admitted his feelings for Marco out loud for the first time in his life. Now is not the time to be sick.

When he opens his eyes again, the right one first and then the left, Marco is closer than he was before. He peers down at Mats’ and grins.

“Gonna throw up?” he asks.

Mats doesn’t dare to shake his head. “No."

“You sure?” he grins while Mats tries to hold as still as possible. Bastard.

In response, Mats lifts one of his hands and flicks off Marco’s forehead, making Marco laugh at him before he leans down and kisses Mats.

It is, by no means, a historical kiss. They’re both drunk enough that an innocent press of closed mouths turns wet and not safe for work in mere seconds. Marco tastes like fine beer and cheese crackers, a curious combination. Mats finds that he doesn’t hate it, the same way he doesn’t hate anything about Marco. Marco is the more sober of the two, so he’s the one who explores Mats’ mouth in a vicious and rough kiss, but still there is a softness to it, a hint of carefulness. Mats loves every second of it.

He cups Marco’s cheek and brings him closer until they are flushed together, not a breath’s width between them. He kisses Marco as if Marco is infinity and he is the desperate astronaut searching for one last, miracle trip.

They kiss for ages on end with months of longing on the tip of their bruised lips. They breathe from their noses and refuse to part. It’s only when Marco begins to tear at Mats’ shirt, always the impatient one, that Mats stops their frantic movements.

“We can’t do this right now,” he says, cringing at the words. They aren’t easy to push out, but some things need to be said.

“Why not?” Marco asks, hands stilled on Mats’ shoulders. His voice is neutral, face devoid of emotions. Mats hates the sight of it.

“Because you’re drunk,” Mats replies. He peppers a light trail of kisses from Marco’s right cheek to his left. He wants Marco to know that he still wants this like he wants sunlight, rain and oxygen and that he’s not rejecting him.

Marco stares at him like he’s an idiot. “We’ve already established that,” he says before he dives back in and starts sucking a mark on Mats’ neck.

It takes all of Mats’ strength and will to keep complaining. He is such a saint.

“No, but—” Mats tries to push him off. He mostly fails. Damn Marco and his surprisingly strong, skinny arms. “We can’t do this while we’re drunk in someone else’s bedroom. It’s not right.”

“You and your chivalrous ways, Hummels,” Marco groans, but he rolls off Mats so the point is mute.

“You love my chivalrous ways,” Mats says with a grin. 

“Yeah, whatever,” Marco says.

Mats’ grin widens. He takes his time rolling his body until he can lean on his elbow to look down at Marco. “You like me,” he says, in a childlike voice. He is drunk and happier than he’s been in a long time.

“You like me too!” Marco says, pointing an accusatory finger at Mats. They act as if liking each other is a bad thing, and not the reason why they’re smiling at one another like the other is the sun.

“I do,” Mats replies. He gives up on trying to stay above Marco and flops down, hiding his face on Marco’s neck and cuddling him like he’s a teddy bear. 

Marco lets him, pushing a hand through Mats’ dark curls. A comfortable silence settles in around them. The faint hands of sleep begin to tug at Mats.

“There’s a mirror on the ceiling,” Marco says after a couple of minutes, disturbing both of them. “Why is there a mirror on the ceiling? I thought this was a guest bedroom.”

“Whoever owns this place wants to make sure the people who stay here enjoy the best experience possible,” Mats says, giggling like a five-year-old throughout the whole speech. 

His words or maybe the sound of his laughter make Marco giggle as well. Not too long after, they’re both cackling together like mad men, wrapped around each other as they try to control themselves. “Do you know whose house this is?” Marco asks him.

Mats shakes his head. The last traces of laughter die on his lips. “Ginter,” Marco says, making Mats look up at him with comically wide eyes.

“Seriously?” he asks.

“Yupe,” Marco replies, popping the ‘p’ at the end. He grins down at Mats as if they’d just shared a great secret. Mats grins back.

It doesn’t take long for Marco to edge even closer to Mats and for his grin to become a leer, which is around the same time Mats says, “Come on, let’s get you home.”

“Let’s get _you_ home,” Marco says. Mats rolls his eyes and his body as he gets up.

He and Marco walk out side by side, leaning on each other and waving at the few people they recognize. They call a cab since neither of them is in the right state to drive. Mats isn’t sure how he ends up in Marco’s flat with Marco instead of in his own home, but he doesn’t complain. They fry burgers with cheese at three in the morning and make out on Marco’s couch until four.

In the morning, they have sex. They’re both sober and in Marco’s bedroom. Mats says, “I love you,” three small words that slip from his mouth before he can hold them back.

Marco says them back.

 

 

 

(Marco and Mats meet during an afternoon rainstorm.

It’s July and it should not be raining like this, which is why they find themselves hiding underneath the plastic roof of a bus stop. They use their umbrellas as shields whenever a car drives by, but the makeshift barrier isn’t enough to stop the water from soaking Mats to the core of his bones. Water drips down his neck and seeps into his clothes. It doesn’t take long before his body is taken over by uncomfortable chills and currents of sneezes.

A taxicab was meant to show up twenty minutes ago to pick them up from training and take them to the team’s hotel, but luck wasn’t on their side today.

“Are you alright?” Marco asks him. He’s wearing a leather jacket and doesn’t look half as cold and pathetic as Mats.

“Been better,” Mats says. He doesn’t want to be curt with Marco; they’d met only earlier in the day during practice with the national team and Mats is trying to make a good first impression. 

This moment right now would, otherwise, be the perfect opportunity for them to get to know each other if it weren’t for how half the Atlantic Ocean is pouring on their asses and Mats kind of wants to murder someone.

“Here,” Marco says. He strips off his jacket and hands it to Mats, “so you don’t get a cold,” he explains.

Mats stares at Marco as if he’s crazy. Mats is not some damsel in distress in need of saving from a white, shiny night with a mohawk, thanks. He means to say exactly that, but his damn survival skills act first. They force Mats’ body into movement, grabbing Marco’s jacket and slipping it on before another thought is made.

After he’s put on the jacket, Mats says, “Thank you,” since he wasn’t raised in a barn.

“No problem,” Marco replies. The way he’s smiling at Mats is bright and painfully honest, and Mats knows he doesn’t have to worry about this being a blow to his dignity. “What did you think of today’s training session?” Marco asks him to shift the topic.

They spend the next hour or so talking about training with the national team and with their respective clubs; their favorite music, television shows and food; as well as their aspirations and dreams. Mats discovers that Marco gets louder and more excited the further the conversation goes, his confidence growing with each word, and that he’s funnier than he has any right to be.

It’s five years, two months and six days until they kiss.)


End file.
